Collier brushed
back a graying lock of hair from her forehead and reached for the start button
on the Integrator. She switched it on and it clicked softly. There was a brief
scent of ozone in the close air of the hospital room.

“Don’t you usually
wait until the Canvas is complete before sending him in?” asked Greenbaum, a
journalism student.

“Yes we do,”
replied Collier. “But this patient clearly doesn’t have much time left. It would
be a shame if we waited too long.”

Walter Lawston’s
memories had proven harder to gather than any patient she had ever had. Collier
sighed and took the old man’s vitals. She had learned bits and pieces of his
story through the process of getting the Canvas ready. It had made her cry the
previous evening as she sat alone in the ladies room by the nurses’ station.

She reached down and stroked the
soft, white hair that remained at the scruff of the old man’s neck. Rapid eye
movement began behind his closed eyelids. He was heading off into his own past
now, interacting with it, hopefully even changing it, if only in his head. It
wouldn’t be perfect, for there were always flaws and gaps in memory, especially
in this case. Collier hoped it would still make things a little better for him
at the end of his life.

“Pleasant dreams, old man,” she
whispered.

****

A long hallway shimmered into view. Doorways
opened and closed as ghostly apparitions went in and out of dorm rooms. The dark
brown of the linoleum floor solidified in quick-moving stripes, as if being
painted by an unseen hand. The acoustical tiles of the ceiling, stained and
pocked, flickered into being above.

The sounds came next, fading in as
if someone was turning up the volume on a movie. An unseen pair of flip-flops
padded down the linoleum hallway. Muted conversations, punctuated with far-off
sounding laughter came from the area in front of the drinking fountain. Tinny
music spilled from underneath the doorways of rooms. It was 1960’s rock and roll
mostly, although strains of ‘Moon River’ came from behind a door marked ‘406.’
The sounds suddenly swelled and clarified, as if someone had switched from a
transistor radio to a set of real speakers.

Next there were smells - a hint of
burnt popcorn from room 412, reefer from room 442, a whiff of Old Spice
lingering in the air of the hallway.

Walter Lawston stood with his legs
apart, watching wide-eyed as the scene came together around him. He reached out
and touched the cold, cinderblock wall on his left. It felt solid. But the wispy
shapes flittering around him still looked like ghosts.

It wasn’t as if Walter didn’t know
where he was. He knew this place well, and he knew this time, for it was his own
past. But still, it was a shock when a door at the end of the hallway opened and
Paul Grout, his college roommate, stepped into the hallway, shimmering at first
like a projection on a fluttering sheet, and then becoming as solid as the
yellow cinderblock walls. He strolled towards Walter and he had an achingly
familiar, confused look on his zit-scarred face.

“Hey, Walt,” Grout said. “What’s up?
You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

At first Walter couldn’t speak, for
he was looking at a ghost. Paul Grout had been killed in Vietnam more
than fifty years ago. Walter had even been a pallbearer at his funeral. But here
was Paul, alive and breathing, standing in front of him wearing a Beatles
t-shirt and cutoff shorts, hair falling over his shoulders, white bath towel on
his arm.

“You okay?” asked Grout, cocking his
head in bewilderment.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” stammered
Walter, “it’s just...it’s good to be here.” Emotion welled up in Walter’s chest
and threatened to overwhelm him. Tears pushed at the corners of his eyes.

Paul Grout reached out and tapped
the top of Walter’s head. “Mission Control to Walt! Anybody home? Hello!”

Grout shook his head and edged past
Walter down the hallway, muttering to himself, “Play the field, I tell him. But
does he listen? Noooooo. Lucy comes along and it’s goodbye Walt…”

As Grout’s voice faded away,
Walter’s breath caught in his throat. So this was the night.

Out of all the nights of Walter’s
life, this was the one he had wanted to come back to, the one he had dreamt
about for so long. This was the night he had planned to ask Lucy to marry him.
They had argued instead about some trivial thing and it had ruined the mood.
Walter had let the whole thing slide until another night. But that other night
never came.

Activity in the hallway around
Walter continued. Boomer bounced a Super Ball off the door to the stairwell.
Lusk came through the doorway and was beaned on the head, causing Boomer to
laugh like a maniac. Matson leaned out of room 408 and shouted, “Turn that crap
off!” into the open door of 406, where Thompson was still playing ‘Moon River’
at full volume.

Walter ventured a step forward and
then another. There was no resistance in his legs, the legs that hadn’t been
worth a damn for the past ten years. He looked down in wonder and watched as his
feet moved, smoothly and without a bit of pain. It felt like he could have been
floating, and he jumped casually in the air just to see if he could do it. A
surprised chuckle escaped his lips as he landed. His steps became firmer as he
got used to walking freely again. He was nearly skipping by the time he reached
the end of the hallway.

He edged past
Boomer and Lusk and stood in front of room 400, the last door on the right. A
cardboard sign taped to the door read, “Grout and Walt’s Place - Free Beer
Tomorrow.”

He turned the brass doorknob. As the
door swung inward the memories rushed out at him like air from a pressurized
can. He had spent four school years in this tiny room, with a single bed on each
side, matching pinewood desks in each corner, books on shelves. Brightly colored
pictures filled the walls. On Grout’s side was an Andy Warhol picture of John
Lennon and a black light poster of a naked couple embracing labeled “Flaming
Love.” On Walter’s side was a blue and yellow flag of Sweden and a Hobbit
calendar.

On the ledge above Walter’s bed was
his beer candle. At the beginning of the semester Walter had stuck a candle to
the top of a Pabst Blue Ribbon can and let the wax melt down the sides. Then he
had burned candle after candle on the same spot until the can was buried in
layers of multi-colored wax. It was a lot like Walter’s own life. Each of his
long years had dripped wax on his best memories, obscuring the details. But now
the wax had been stripped away and he could see the can underneath.

Walter smiled and
reached out his hand. Suddenly the beer can shimmered briefly and was covered
with layers of wax. Then it shimmered again and there was no wax at all. Then it
disappeared, to be replaced by a paperback book, Stranger In A Strange Land.
Walter pulled his hand back as if he had touched a hot stove. He looked around
the room. The John Lennon poster was now a picture of Neuschwanstein Castle. The
Hobbit calendar was now filled with pictures of Chicago White Sox players.

The room swayed briefly and Walter
flopped down onto his bed. Dr. Collier had said it wouldn’t be perfect. It stood
to reason that his memories would have gotten jumbled up after all these years.
Evidently, his brain was having trouble sorting them all out. But none of that
mattered now. He was back where he’d always longed to be. Tonight was the night
he would see Lucy and set everything right.

Walter stood up and walked
unsteadily to the mirror. The sight of his own reflection nearly made him sit
down again. Instead of the lined, weary face he had seen every morning for so
long, he was looking into a face right out of the pages of his college yearbook.
He still had a full head of strawberry-blond hair. His skin was smooth. His
beard was merely a wisp. Best of all, his eyes were clear and bright, as if
looking toward a shining future. There was no sadness there, no grief, no
regret. They were the eyes of a young man.

Walter’s heart thumped, not from
disease but from excitement. He hadn’t felt like this in fifty years. He looked
at his watch, a Bulova, the kind you have to wind by hand. It was 7:35 and time
to get ready. He was supposed to meet Lucy at the Student Union at 8 o’clock –
he was sure of that. He pulled back the bamboo curtain of his closet and picked
out something to wear…

****

“So how long have you been doing
this?” asked Greenbaum.

“Nearly since the beginning,”
Collier answered. “I started out in Alzheimer’s research and that led to this.”
She watched the monitors, checking for any signs of distress.

“Have you ever experienced it
yourself?” Greenbaum asked.

“Of course. It was part of my
training.”

“Is it like dreaming?”

Collier looked off into the
distance. “No, it’s much more than that. If you integrate long-term memory with
the conscious mind, the brain thinks you’re actually back there. All the sounds,
smells, and emotions are real to you, and if there are any gaps, the brain
usually learns to fill them in.”

Collier thought of what it had felt
like when she had gone back into her own memories. She had chosen a time when
her mother and father had both been alive, before she’d gone away to medical
school. She had been too busy to spend much time with her parents in those days,
and by the time she finished with school, they were both gone, so she went back
into her past to try again. When they had turned on the Integrator, she had
found herself sitting at the piano with her mother in the parlor of the old
house, in the old neighborhood. The two of them played a duet on Silent Night,
while her father stood behind them and sang along in his deep baritone voice,
resting his hand on her shoulder.

Collier unconsciously reached her
hand up and touched the spot where her father’s hand had rested. “You should
know,” she said softly, “it’s hard to come back to real life.”

Greenbaum nodded. “I’ve heard about
people who had to actually be shocked into coming out of it.”

Collier frowned. “That’s been
somewhat overstated, but yes, there have been a few problems. But we’ve worked
them out. In a case like Mr. Lawston, it’s not a concern. He doesn’t have much
time left, so what does it matter if he spends it in his past? We’re just trying
to bring him some happiness at the end.”

“It seems to be working,” said
Greenbaum.

And indeed, the
old man’s face appeared to be backlit as a wide grin creased the corners of his
mouth. Wherever he was, he was enjoying himself.

****

Walter tied his
shoes and smiled for the mirror one last time. He had to admit he looked pretty
good. It had been a long, long time since his hair had hung down over his
forehead. He pushed it aside and squeezed a small zit, squirting a little pus
onto the mirror. It had really been a long time since he’d done that.

“Having fun?” asked Grout, just back
from the shower.

Walter looked back over his
shoulder. “Actually, yes. I can’t believe I’m here. It’s all so...” He stopped.

“What are you talking about?” asked
Grout.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Walter watched Grout dry his hair
with a towel. God, it was good to see Paul again.

“Paul?”

“What?”

“You still thinking of enlisting?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I thought you were going into your
Dad’s metal finishing business.”

Grout shook his long hair back.
“There’s plenty of time for that. After I get out.”

Walter nodded, even though he knew
that Paul Grout’s time would run out long before his enlistment was up. He would
have to talk to him about that later. But he could only fix one thing at a time.
He looked at his watch. It was 7:55 and Lucy was always early. She would be
waiting for him.

“I gotta go,” he said to Grout.

“Have fun,” Grout answered. “I
suppose it’s too late to tell you not to get all goofy.”

Walter grabbed a towel and snapped
it at his roommate as he walked out the door.

In the
stairwell, Walter’s feet were barely touching the steps as he ran down. When he
burst outside into the autumn evening he stopped and took a deep breath. This
was the air he remembered. A cool breeze came in off the lake and he could smell
smoke from a bonfire on the beach. A scattering of brown leaves blew around the
sidewalk. He leaned down and picked up a handful, crushing them in his palm. He
breathed in the rich aroma. October had been his favorite month in those days,
long before the chill of old age had settled deep in his bones.

By the time he reached the Student
Union his heart was pounding in his ears. Lucy would be waiting for him just
inside those doors, around the corner, sitting on a barstool. She would be
wearing the white sweater she had knitted for herself. She would smile when she
saw him. It was that smile he remembered most about her. And now he would see it
again.

He grabbed the door handle and
pulled. It was locked.

Walter rattled the handle. How could
it be locked? He knew this was the right night. He had met Lucy at the Union.
They each had a Coke and then they walked down to the lakeshore. He was sure of
it. He looked at the Hours Of Operation posted next to the door.

Monday thru Friday - 7:00 AM to
10:00 PM

Saturday - 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM

Sunday - CLOSED

He looked at his watch. Eight
o‘clock. Had his memory been wrong? That didn’t seem possible. Maybe he had
picked her up at her dorm instead of the Union that night. North Hall, room 218,
that’s where she lived. Or was it Denhart? Was it North Hall junior year and
Denhart senior year? Or was it the other way around?

Walter’s brain seemed to lock up as
he stepped away from the door. He would have to go back up to his room and ask
Grout about some of the details. Grout would think Walter was crazy but he
already thought that anyhow.

Something seemed to be wrong with
Johnson Hall. It shimmered in front of his eyes and the stairway he would
normally take up to his room was now a solid, stone wall. The lights in the
windows of the north wing blinked out, to be replaced by jagged, black holes. He
tipped his head back and saw the stars in the night sky spinning out of control.
He toppled over backward and hit the sidewalk hard, gaping up at the unstable
world like a beached fish. Suddenly the cement went soft beneath his back - soft
as a hospital bed.

“No!” he gasped as his past receded
back into the dark corners of his mind.

****

Walter opened his eyes. The smell of
October bonfire had been replaced by the medicinal odor of a hospital room. The
sounds of rock music had become the soft beeps of a life support machine.

“You’re back,” said Collier.

Walter turned his head to the side.
Tears formed in his eyes. He had never felt so disappointed in his life. And so
empty. He began to sob.

Collier motioned for Greenbaum to
leave the room and he slipped out into the hallway.

“Tell me about it,” Collier said
softly.

When Walter got himself under
control again, or at least as much control as you can have while being kept
alive by machines, he looked up and blinked.

Collier bit her lip. That wasn’t
possible. Once a Canvas fell apart the brain could never be fooled again. There
was only one ticket per customer, and Mr. Lawson had used his up. And it was her
fault.

“Please,” begged Walter, “I’ll do it
right this time. We won’t argue. I’ll ask her to marry me, just like I wanted to
in the first place. She won’t go away mad. She won’t drive off in her car. She
won’t die.”

Collier grimaced. This man had lived
his whole, bitter adult life with one glaring regret. He’d never been able to
shake off that terrible night. He’d never found happiness with anyone else. This
wasn’t just a small regret, like most of her patients had. This was a life-long
yearning, an avalanche of guilt that no therapist had been able to take away.
And now the one chance she had given him to make things right in his mind had
failed. It nearly broke her heart.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll get started
on a reset. We’ll wait until it’s completely ready this time. In the meantime
try and get some sleep.”

Collier set the IV to give Walter a
slightly higher dose of morphine. Before he drifted off, she made sure he saw
her push some buttons on the Integrator. The only thing she could give him now
was hope. But it was a false hope.

****

The images raced through Walter’s
head like a runaway train. It felt like a fever dream, where nothing makes any
sense. Voices shouted and whispered, voices from long ago and just yesterday –
nurses and doctors and his kindergarten teacher. He tried to shout, to make it
all stop, but his mouth went numb and his vocal cords seemed to be gone. He
could only lie there and gasp as his breathing became ragged.

‘I’m going to die
now,’ he thought.

Suddenly the
images slowed. The voices went quiet. A scene acquiesced into his mind. He was
back standing outside of Johnson Hall. This time there didn’t seem to be any
missing pieces in the Canvas.

His tennis shoes
shuffled through October leaves. His breath fogged in the crisp night air. His
heart raced.

“I remember,”
he said.

He took off
running.

“North Hall, room
206. I know that’s right.”

Thirty seconds to
cross the Quad lawn, his tennis shoes scrunching the autumn brown grass. Twenty
seconds to make it past Denhart Hall, lighted windows winking. Twenty more
seconds to make it to the front of North Hall.

Lucy’s dorm.

Up the steps, two
at a time. He stopped on the landing, breathing hard. He looked up. The stone
building was a blue castle in the moonlight. This was it. He flung open the
front door. He raced past the hall monitor. She shouted after him to sign in. He
didn’t stop.

In the stairwell. Up one flight.
Through the swinging door. Royal blue cinderblock walls, achingly familiar. The
4th door on the right.

Lucy.

Walter closed his eyes and softly
whispered a thank you to Dr. Collier. Then he lifted his hand to knock.

****

“We’re losing him,” said Collier.
She hated this part. After all her years of training, she could only stand at
the old man’s bedside and helplessly watch him die.

Greenbaum observed the scene from a
chair in the corner of the room. It frankly surprised him a little. He had
always pictured doctors as cold, clinical types, unable to form an attachment to
their patients for professional reasons. But this woman had tears in her eyes.
He thought of going over to comfort her but that seemed like too much. Instead,
he settled on a cliché. “You did everything you could.”

“No, I didn’t,” she answered. “I got
impatient and rushed things. I should have waited until the Canvas was done.”

“Was there time for that?” asked
Greenbaum.

“No, I guess not.” She turned her
head away, more out of frustration than for any other reason.

****

Walter’s hand paused in front of
Lucy’s door. Could this really be happening? Would he finally get the chance he
had been waiting all his life for? There was only one way to find out.

He rapped softly.
After a pause that seemed like hours, a voice came from the other side.

“Just a minute.”

Walter’s legs felt
like putty. He remembered that voice.

The door opened. Lucy stood there in
the doorway, dressed in a white sweater, the one she had knitted for herself.
There was that smile, the one that had danced in Walter’s head for all those sad
years.

“Hello, Walter,” she said.

“There’s
something I want to ask you,” he said.

He put his arms
around her, tentatively at first, and then more tightly. She felt warm. And
real. His body shook with sobs.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, pulling
away.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing ever
again.”

****

Collier switched off the life
support. The old man’s body had finally gotten tired of fighting.

It was her life’s work to try and
make things better for people. But this time, she had made things worse. She
felt a dull ache in her bones and an empty feeling in her gut.

Collier ran her
hands through her hair and stood up straight. “Yes, of course,” she said firmly.
She reached out and shook Greenbaum’s hand. “Good luck to you. I hope you’ll
give us a decent write-up. We could use more funding.”

As soon as
Greenbaum let himself out of the room, Collier collapsed into a chair and
allowed herself to weep, releasing some of the pent-up emotion of the past few
days. She had seen a lot of people die, but this one had been harder than most.

Collier asked herself all the old
questions. Where was Walter now? Was he simply gone? Or was there something
more? Like most of her patients, Walter had talked about Heaven near the end. In
her better moments Collier hoped there was a place like that.

She dried her eyes with the back of
her hand. If there was a Heaven she thought she might have gotten a
glimpse of it when she had gone into her own Canvas. Maybe Heaven was a place
for second chances. It was a very appealing thought.

Collier looked at her watch. It was
8 PM and time to go home. She had another terminal patient to meet with first
thing in the morning. She would get a second chance then, not with Walter, but
with somebody else. She hoped things would go better this time, for, in spite of
everything, she simply wanted to do some good in the world.